Hurt or Heal
by Ravenclaw-Rose
Summary: This time, Bert would heal Evie, and she would hurt him...One shot


Disclaimer: eastenders, Bert and Evie are not mine

Hurt or heal…

She knew she had to do it. If not for her own peace of mind then she had to do it for her Karen and the bond they had shared. The bond she had betrayed.

The sweat was dripping off Evie, she was so hot, but so cold. She knew the wind was about to blow a lot colder too. Bert was not going to forgive her for this. And she was unable to expect him too.

"I brought Karen up to think - George was her dad." She struggled out the words.  
Her throat was so sore, it felt red raw, but nothing hurt her like the pain that showed in her loves eyes

He had always been her love since that day they bad met on the train station platform. Never had she forgotten that one golden moment in her life.

Some how in her heart she was desperate for him to take her in to his arms as he had done so many times before and tell her it was ok.

But it so wasn't .

What she had done….it had been wicked. As wicked as his eyes.

But in that moment when he had learnt his precious daughter and now grand son never knew his name the spark gone.

She had taken it from him and it broke her heart to the very bottom.

What if that one moment had robbed him of her? fear took over. Yes she had done the right thing… but what good was it now if she hadn't. She was unable to take it back.

But she loved him so much. The aching in her body with the cancer was nothing like the aching in her soul for his love these past almost forty years. For his face, his touch…

He had been her sweetheart, and it didn't matter how old you got. You never forgot sweetheart, or how there love felt. You never feel out of love with them either.

It was the kind of love that made you stand by them no matter what. But maybe the scariest thing of all was to one another they had the sort of love that they either hurt or healed one another.

And this time as he healed her, she hurt him. And his pain now went deeper than hers had ever.

When this week was over, she knew her pain was going to be over. She was just going to go to sleep and then that was going to be the end of Evie Atkinson (for she had never been a Brown). To her self she had always been Evie Atkinson.  
Yet he was going have so much to do… especially with little Jay. And it broke her heart to see that she wasn't going to make it to see the two of them bond as she so knew they would.

But then he did the scariest thing. Bert did some thing her had never done before.

He pulled away.

"Oh Bert." she said to him . "don't pull back. Please don't take yourself from me." Evie begun to weep softly.

These past three days since he had been with her, well they had come to her as a cool breeze came on a boiling summer day.

He had taken her back in to his life with out reserve only to learn that she, the women he'd adored had let there daughter grow up doing every thing she should have done with him, with another man.

If the tables had been turned she didn't know what she would have done. Only she knew if it was her, she knew she would never love him again.

God and the way he was looking at her. It was like a child who had learned there hero was a faker. The amazing idol was a fraud.

This couldn't be happening, she tried to comfort herself. But it was. For the first time ever her Bert was seeing his angel with out her wings of her hallow. And he was seeing her for what she was.

And it hurt. It was hurt that she had been so dishonest with him. It hurt that she had come back in to his life only to break his heart again.

Why had she called him. It would have been better if she had just left well alone.  
Maybe even better if they had never even met. To hurt him this way was more than she was able to bear.

"I am so sorry." she had never felt so sick to her stomach. What kind of sicko was she? What mother lied to her daughter as she had?

And now he, the most kind, loving, caring, big hearted man in the world was in incurable pain.

When ever he had hurt before and she had had to see it she had bee able to kiss it better for him, or healed him with her love, but this time she knew he would flinch at her touch. And that really would be the death of her.

Sitting there in silence, the only noise was her soft whimpering.

_Hold me…please, darling, just hold me…._ She thought to herself but by this time she was far too ashamed to ask. For she had done nothing worthy of being held.  
At the time she had let it happen, she had just been so scared. George had been a good man and very worthy of being Karen's dad and he was undeniably good father to his some what adopted daughter. There was only ever one problem with that. He wasn't her father.

"Can you ever forgive me?" she whispered.

His only response was to walk out the room, shut the door and force her to listen as he sobbed his heart out on the stairs.

His heart was in just as many pieces as hers was. Why had she not told him sooner? Why shad she not found him? He would have made it ok for the three of them. some how! Why didn't she want him to find her, why why why!

Tears of grief rolled down his face as he remembered watching Karen walk for the first time. For so many years it had been the thought which had kept him alive and strong, with the undying hope one day she was going to walk straight back in to his arms.

And now after years of dreams, that hope had died. And the love for Evie … his love for her was eternal. But her betrayal cut him. It felt as if he had been hung, drawn and quartered.

When he had seen her in the hospice for the first time in thirty eight years he knew his heart was still hers, and always was going to be. Him and Mo… well they has been fun. But they had ever been him and Evie.

And now, well he and Evie weren't he and Evie. Not the way he remembered her. this Evie want his. Where was his angel who never did a thing wrong? Where was she?

He needed her now, and she wasn't here.

He could here her calling or him from the living room but his legs were too weak to carry him.

Karen was dead, Evie was dying. He had nothing in this world to go on for now.  
Every thing good and sacred was gone… and that only left him.

Him, utterly alone…


End file.
